]]>For most organizations, building a modern-day cloud application that rivals something as clean and fast as Uber or Facebook is, obviously, not an easy-to-do task. The art of crafting a responsive app that’s able to load up and transmit data in real time demands a developer team that’s skilled in multiple web frameworks and languages like Angular.js, Node.js and PHP.

Meteor Development Group wants to simplify this process, and it thinks the best way to do so is to build everything in JavaScript, the ubiquitous programming language that’s the backbone of web browsers. Meteor Development Group’s open-source project, dubbed Meteor, is essentially a souped-up JavaScript application framework that’s designed to make it easier for coders to create real-time apps like those found at big tech companies while appeasing enterprises who are more familiar with JavaScript than other languages.

“It’s a fresh design to how to build modern architecture out of JavaScript,” said Meteor Development Group founder Matt DeBergalis. “With the right design, you can build experiences like Uber with ten lines of code.”

Enterprises stuck in the past

The way DeBergalis explains it, twenty years ago, the best applications were found in the enterprise. With the advent of mobile computing and real-time applications like Uber and Facebook that are constantly sucking up and distributing data, however, consumers are now used to a type of real-time functionality that’s hard to find among enterprise apps.

“The enterprise is still stuck on Internet Explorer 8,” said DeBergalis. “Why can’t I see the financial reports on my phone? The answer is we [enterprises] can’t afford to write the thing you want.”

And that’s the crux enterprises face: It’s difficult to hire developers who have the skills to craft these type of complex applications, as it requires finding coders who are well-versed in multiple languages like Node.js, Ruby on Rails and the like. And once you find these talented developers, you have to cough up the cash that their skill set requires—hiring in the tech industry is competitive, as you probably already know.

Meteor Development Group founder Matt DeBergalis

But if coders are able to build real-time apps using their knowledge of JavaScript, enterprises may find it easier to acquire talent and it could boost the speed of building apps.

“We’ve completed a two-plus year development project that got us to a stable production-ready JavaScript platform that makes it dramatically faster to write apps,” said DeBergalis.

The promise of a real-time web framework

The Meteor framework is an example of what’s known as isomorphic JavaScript, a term popularized by Airbnb engineer Spike Brehm. When a programming language is labeled isomorphic, that basically means that the code can execute on both the server side (where storage systems and databases exists) as well as the client side (what the user sees when accessing an application).

With real-time applications like Uber’s, there can often be several different places where code is now running, instead of the past in which a simple desktop application would only have to interact with a web server to access data, explained DeBergalis.

A modern, real-time application can potentially be comprised of multiple codebases (an Android application, an IOS application and a desktop application, for example), multiple APIs to ensure that all of those different codebases can speak to each other, and multiple databases. A web framework like Meteor essentially covers all of these areas and negates the need to have teams of specialists whose jobs are to maintain several different code bases, he said.

“The idea of isomorphic JavaScript is you want to use the same language and same API in all of those places,” said DeBergalis.

Because the application is now built on one single framework, it’s simpler to keep track of live updates. The JavaScript can watch for changes in a MongoDB database and “alert the programmer when information in that database changes,” DeBergalis said.

Keeping track of database changes is imperative for Meteor as it allows real-time syncing of data on different devices. The Meteor framework works by including “little cache servers next to each user” that are stored in-memory on the user’s device, DeBergalis explained.

Getting started with Meteor

These in-memory database cache servers are essentially connected to the main database servers stored at the home base, and every time a change in the database occurs due to a user request or transmission, the framework updates those small cache servers so that users get their data fed to them as quickly as possible.

What’s next for Meteor?

Since Meteor was founded in the summer of 2011, it’s gained a lot of traction with developers who are looking for a quicker way to build real-time apps. The 19-person company counts hot startups like Slack, Stripe and Respondly as users.

The startup also has the support of Andreessen Horowitz, who along with Matrix Partners, drove Meteor’s 2012 Series A funding round worth $11.2 million, which Gigaom’s Barb Darrow reported on back in 2012.

The next step for Meteor will be unveiling its long-awaited commercial product called Galaxy, although DeBergalis declined to state when it will be released. As the open-source Meteor framework targets developers, DeBergalis said Galaxy will be more operations-focussed and he described it as a “cloud service for running Meteor apps.”

Although DeBergalis wouldn’t spill the beans on what Meteor has in store for Galaxy, he indicated that the service will address the difficulties of running a real-time application across multiple data centers.

Meteor also only supports the MongoDB and Redis databases, and is working on including support for SQL, he said. Supporting multiple databases will be important for Meteor’s success, especially as many tech observers believe that no single database can satisfy all needs.

“What’s interesting is that developers on .NET today are looking for ways to get to the phone,” DeBergalis said. “If I’ve been a .NET developer for a couple of years, I would want to look for something new.”

Will big enterprises start to give Meteor a test drive, since as of now, it appears that it’s more of a startup commodity? While Meteor promises an easier way to build applications, it might be a chore for legacy companies to convert their old application infrastructure to the new framework, although DeBergalis said “there are ways that companies can retrofit their old applications to this new world.”

There’s no denying that the development world is changing and users are demanding fast-responding applications; with new frameworks like Meteor, catching up to this changing world could be less of a nightmare for enterprises.

]]>While carrying some amount of risk and a high amount of resistance from entrenched vendors, modular handsets may present a viable economic and ecological alternative as we look toward the inevitable post-smartphone world.

]]>Radical innovation has historically overcome barriers to scientific progress. For example, the discovery of pi as a numerical concept found application in mathematics, physics, signal and image processing, genomics and across domains. Similarly, the internet unleashed innovation across industries. Today, the computing world stands at a point where “pi”-like innovations can unlock quantum value.

The disproportionate dichotomy

Enterprises spend $2.7 trillion on technology related products. More than 95 percent of that spend is driven by desktop or laptop related applications, services, networking and data center infrastructure for employees, partners and customers.

Amongst enterprises, there is an installed base of 700 million personal computers, while smartphones and tablets form an installed base of 400 million mobile computing units. While mobile computing units constitute 36 percent of devices, less than 5 percent of enterprise dollars are focused on the mobile device base highlighting a disproportionate dichotomy.

New sales of mobile computing devices will grow from 150 million to an estimated 235 million new units per year by 2017. However in 2017 only an estimated 180 million laptops or desktops will be sold that year — and the growth in those machine sales is flat.

Meanwhile 3G connections will grow to 6 billion by 2017 and faster 4G connections will grow to 800 million connections. As per Cisco, smartphone broadband speeds will triple to 6.5 Mbps. Building on those speeds, Forrester forecasts the applications market for mobile computing will grow at 124 percent compound annual growth rate to reach more than $20 billion by 2017.

These leading indicators highlight a transformation in enterprise technology architecture: The massive shift from PC-based computing to smart mobile computing. Yet, barriers to larger adoption and innovation remain.

In mobile, diversity is a problem and success can hurt

A key barrier is the evolving mobile computing landscape with multiple form factors and operating systems. For example there are operating systems such as iOS, Android, RIM, Windows, Symbian as well as new launches as Firefox, Ubuntu and Jolla. This is in contrast to personal computing on laptops and desktops where 95 percent of devices have Windows OS. There is no single “OS for the enterprise” on the mobile side.

Another barrier is lack of talent and best practices in smart mobile computing that will lead to low returns for early adopters and create disillusionment. Most mobile apps replicate portal functions and do not make use of the true points of differentiation a mobile device can offer. They don’t take into account customer insights, use cases or build upon mobile functions such as real-time social computing, location, personalization.

A survey of CIOs indicate that more than two thirds of North American and European insurers will increase investment in mobile applications, however Gartner predicts that lack of alignment with customer interests and poor technical execution will lead to low adoption rates. In fact, Gartner expects that by 2016 more than 50 percent of the mobile insurance customer apps will be discontinued.

For those that have found a killer mobile application use case, it is difficult to manage the evolving traffic, real-time data access and heavy computing requirements.

Imagine having access to your company’s intranet on a mobile device. An employee will access programs, news and blog maybe ten times a day in a socially connected enterprise vis-à-vis once a week on a personal computer. A single use case may drive 10 to 50 times the traffic. Executives will check real-time performance and provide directives, or supply chain participants will check inventory and replenishment data and make work orders in real time. The mobile architecture updates data on every opportunity to access the network as opposed to a “pull-based” mechanism on personal computer. If 10 percent of your use cases migrate to mobile, they may generate as much traffic as the rest of your 90 percent web-based use cases.

Because of the potential to crush a staid IT infrastructure with more data requests occurring more often, 75 percent of consumer mobile traffic is served from the cloud which can scale reliably as usage spikes. Yet, unlike consumer applications such as search or games, corporate IT systems have a legacy rigid architecture design that is a key barrier to realizing the potential of smart, mobile computing for the enterprise.

Don’t try to bridge legacy and mobile IT. Rethink it.

Not only business data, but the applications on the device or infrastructure software in the cloud will be upgraded frequently. On average Amazon provisions 10,000 to 30,000 hosts per second – a 200 percent variability. Force.com works with new partners to complement offerings or industry solutions and with Force.com enhancements, partners have to update data stacks and release new versions. Apple serves 30-to-40 percent of global internet demand during an iOS upgrade. As Apple’s IT systems cannot provision for such peak demand, it dynamically scales relying on partners — and so will enterprises need such software-defined IT systems, networks and partners that can auto-provision and scale to serve smart mobile computing.

Individual enterprises are applying resource-intensive mechanisms to solve smart mobile computing issues for compelling use cases. But there is wider opportunity for ecosystem players to innovate across applications, algorithms, protocols, and architectures as opposed to doing so in a one-off fashion.
Innovative startups are attempting to solve issues with cloud applications, tools for mobile device management, application development or M2M platforms. However most are focusing on a point solution with incremental innovation constrained by lack of ecosystem readiness. They are not rethinking the way legacy enterprises need to address the mobile world.

At the other end, incumbent ICT players are investing in mobile solutions to defend existing revenue and relationships or for sustainable growth.
As an analyst puts it, enterprise mobile applications and architectures do not dance yet. If you attempt to connect discrete private cloud infrastructures and link them to public cloud, as industry experts recommend, it would be like ascending to Mount Everest. The network recognizes links and tracks traffic flows, but cannot differentiate between users, applications, or workloads.

The leading vendors have significant investment in current designs, and are unlikely to adopt radical approaches or refocus their R&D. Here lies the opportunity for niche players, “intrapreneurs” at large incumbents, research units at universities or start-ups to pursue radical innovation. You can bridge the legacy enterprise and mobile world or you can utterly rethink it. You should rethink it.

Rethinking IT can change the enterprise …. and the world

Much like the cloud helped democratize the world of enterprise IT — letting startups such as Salesforce become big names, the rise of mobile in the enterprise will only accelerate that trend. Developing mobile applications that pull in the work of others via APIs lets smaller companies build enterprise-grade features and products from any part of the world.

As innovations such as 3D printing and machine to machine communications disrupt established industries with new business models, an enterprise that has adapted smart mobile computing can lead the way without its legacy IT holding it back. The flexibility of these new mobile-oriented platforms will shape digital ecosystems, much like the rise of the client-server model shaped the last thirty years. Building on models possible through smart mobile computing, digital ecosystems will drive industries as healthcare, education, transportation, utilities and even public services as law enforcement, civil management or democratic processes.

Radical innovation is required to make a quantum leap forward. Indeed, the computing world needs “pi”-like innovations that can anticipate and personalize use cases, find insights in terabytes of unrelated data, compute and store infinite data sets, create resilient intelligent networks, and self-healing security systems. A “pi” that can inspire imaginations and not only solve hitherto unsolved problems, but can transcend the digital ecosystems to solve problems we have not yet thought of and change the world.

Nirav Shah is a senior strategist and innovator at global service provider Tata Communications based out of India. When he is not building strategic plans, he finds amusement studying shifts in customer behavior, profit pools and technology. The views expressed here are his own.

Throughout 2013 I think it’s been clear that the tech industry has temporarily plateaued, as we await the next massive shift in how we use computers and the internet. We’ve executed that shift predicted years ago by the late Steve Jobs into the “post-PC era:” this term gets confused to imply that PCs are about to vanish off the face of the earth, but it’s really more about the fact that our primary personal computing experience has shifted onto smaller, nimbler devices like smartphones and tablets.

Anyone who has sat in an airport or waited in line at the grocery store knows that when ever-increasing numbers of people have a free moment, they’re staring at their phones, which can be attractively packaged and run for days because they have embraced a lightweight style of computing that doesn’t require powerful processors and storage systems to take advantage of computing resources stored far away in massive data centers.

A few months ago I accepted a new job running GigaOM’s editorial group, and we’re preparing to take the lessons we’ve learned from chronicling those two massive shifts that are now accepted facts — cloud computing and mobile computing — and use them to help us describe the next wave of technology innovation. The hunger from readers, event speakers, and friends for evidence of this next big shift has become very clear to me after several conversations at our Mobilize conference this past week and as we prepare for our upcoming RoadMap conference, which will be held November 5th and 6th in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the same location where Apple is planning to hold one of its now-trademark mobile product shows Tuesday.

A lot of those people asked me what GigaOM focuses on as we write about this wonderfully insane world of tech, in which amusingly bespoke social sticker apps compete for attention with software-defined networks. The answer is pretty simple. We write about change: about the massive business and societal changes that are unfolding because of the march of technology and connectivity into every corner of our lives.

There are many different ways you can write about the tech industry. Our goal is to provide our readers with the best news, analysis, features, and intelligence that we can produce in order to help them understand how these changes are affecting their businesses and their lives.

And the fundamental principle that GigaOM uses to measure change is that internet connectivity is the foundation of the modern tech industry. You can have the most powerful computers in the world or the most compelling social service ever developed, and none of it matters unless you can reach massive amounts of people through fast, reliable, and fairly priced connectivity.

So in addition to the cloud and mobile computing topics we’ve been covering for years, over the past few months we’ve started to look at newer ideas we find promising. I’m talking about subjects like education and health technology, both of which are changing rapidly and producing friction as mobile devices and always-on internet connections collide with bureaucracy and a rapidly aging population. Mobile computers are turning into “intimate computers,” computers that we’ll wear like jewelry while demanding supercomputing performance. And we’re taking a closer and closer look at emerging technologies like 3D printing and the internet of things, both of which promise to transform the way physical goods are produced by allowing actual objects to travel over the internet and by placing connected computers in unlikely places.

You’ll get a good taste of what this means at RoadMap. We’re going to talk about everything from smart home sensors to the insights that can be found in the piles of data generated by a new world of devices. And it’s all going to be filtered through a single lens: how design — good design — is what humanizes technology and makes it possible for massive behind-the-scenes improvements to processors, sensors, storage, networking, and displays to resonate with people who don’t know a hetnet from a hair net.

We hope you’ll join us at RoadMap. (You can buy your tickets here.) And we hope you continue to help us uncover the next big shift in computing by reading, commenting, and inspiring us to find the companies, technologies and people that are creating the future.

]]>Cyber threats are now a critical issue affecting the national security of nation countries worldwide. At the same time, the IT world is witnessing a wave of new innovation, and there are numerous business opportunities for technologies built around the emerging market sectors of mobile and cloud computing. These technologies and the companies creating with them will form the future of cloud security over the next several years.

]]>If you think you had a crazy year, put yourself in Thorsten Heins’ shoes. The CEO of Research in Motion was dropped into the middle of a “crisis” (his word) in January when he assumed control of one of the pioneering mobile companies of our time in the midst of a downward spiral. He was immediately presented with plunging sales, consumer and press apathy, and the need to remake a company that was terrified of making a decision unless 24 people agreed on a direction.

As the year winds down, Heins is feeling better. “It’s fascinating to see how RIM has evolved in the last 10 months,” he said in an interview Thursday in downtown San Francisco.

BlackBerry 10 handsets, delayed several times already as RIM tries to perfect the device that will have to save the company, are on track for a January launch. New, decisive leaders are in place throughout the organization who are “being honest” with employees — a new concept at RIM — and a semblance of a plan for 2013 has emerged that banks on Heins’ belief that wireless carriers are sick of Apple and Samsung dominating the smartphone market.

RIM hopes to keep up its strong but low-margin performance in countries outside the U.S., regain the confidence of the US smartphone buyer with the BlackBerry 10 handsets, and eventually transition into a true “mobile computing” company that offers phones, tablets, medical devices, connected cars, and all manner of smart connected devices we commonly refer to as the internet of things.

It sounds good on paper. But the challenges are mighty: even assuming that RIM launches BlackBerry 10 handsets without incident in early February and they are well received by the critics, it has been a long time since most people in the U.S. with even a passing interest in smartphones thought about buying a BlackBerry. Unless those folks spend their money with RIM, Heins’ dreams of a mobile computing future may never get off the ground.

So what’s the short-term plan for recapturing the US? “You cannot be a leader without being in the U.S.” Heins said, hastily adding “North America” in a nod to his company’s home country. He thinks that U.S. carriers are salivating at the chance to offer RIM handsets because they offer “choice” that carriers currently don’t have; wireless carriers aren’t crazy about getting the lion’s share of their smartphones from just two companies.

“Android is mostly dominated by Samsung,” he said, adding “my prediction is that Samsung will basically be the strongest player in Windows 8.” Other handset makers can’t compete with Samsung’s in-house advantage in sourcing processors and displays from corporate siblings, Heins said.

RIM is the only other smartphone company that offers unique hardware and software in one package, Heins said. Microsoft may be poised to change that equation should it release its own smartphone, which seems more and more likely, but Heins believes that carriers are happy to see RIM back with a competitive product, and that the same kind of aggressive promotion that made Android a success can help BlackBerry 10.

The details of how that plan will unfold are apparently not ready for public consumption. RIM has spent a great deal of time and money this year convincing software developers that it is ready and willing to help them become successful on BlackBerry 10, but it’s these carrier relationships that will be crucial to RIM’s chances of coming back in the market. Heins declined to share 2013 shipment goals for BlackBerry 10: obviously, RIM has internal goals for the product, but a lot of what will happen with device shipments is “governed by our carriers. It’s not all in our hands.”

Heins drew some flak earlier this year for being quoted as saying “we have a clear shot at being number three” in the smartphone market, as if he weren’t setting his goals high enough.

“Make no mistake, my aspiration is to win,” he said Thursday. “But I can’t sit here in front of investors and partners and say we will be number one.”

What Heins is trying to do is shift the mobile playing field away from smartphones and toward the internet of things, or the spread of intelligent hardware, software and connectivity into everyday devices. That’s the market in which he thinks RIM has an advantage:

“iOS is five years old. At the end of the day it is a downsized PC OS. Look, they did a great job. My point is I’m ahead of them, I have a true mobile computing platform.”

If Heins is to ever make that claim stick, however, he’s going to have to convince a lot of people who have been buying that downsized PC OS for years to switch back to the BlackBerry in 2013.

]]>Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels offered up some cloud-related eye candy on Thursday night in a blog post discussing the challenge of choosing the right metrics for cloud computing. The post contributed to the ongoing conversation about how to calculate the benefits of choosing on-demand infrastructure over building your own with some charts from an Amazon white paper and a few AWS customers explaining what they have saved and spent in going to the cloud.

But the key with cloud computing is that the search for metrics really relies on a keen understanding of what business your company is in. Much like different industries have different metrics associated with their costs, figuring out how to measure IT costs first means someone has to understand the role IT plays in their business. For Google, the important metric is knowing exactly how much it costs to deliver a search result in the maximum amount of time customers will tolerate. Wal-Mart’s ideal metric might involve calculating the trade-off between how much profit margin could be gained by a real-time data analysis and the cost of performing that analysis.

And as those examples make clear, each company probably could use a variety of metrics in their business depending on what aspect of the business is using IT, which just underscores the point that there are no GAAP-like metrics that will help companies easily understand the trade-offs between building their own IT and the cloud. Vogels tries to offer up a “return on agility” concept that is pretty nebulous, but he hints at the real thought process that must take place when thinking about IT.

From Vogels’ post:

“Many of our customers come to AWS with a reduction of TCO and other cost savings in mind but after using AWS for a while most of them will claim that agility is the even more benefit for them. Agility has many different faces within an enterprise: Operational advantages such as setting up infrastructure in minutes rather than months, completing massive computational projects with a large number of resources quickly, and scaling architecture up and down to provide the needed IT resources only when you need them, deliver targeted IT solutions fast for individual business units – these deliver a ‘return on agility.’ The return on agility delivers business value by allowing you adapt rapidly, while remaining focused on your core competencies rather than distracted by operating IT infrastructure.”

The heart of the issue is that for most companies IT is really a tool as opposed to a business differentiator. And once a business understands that, then it can focus its efforts not on calculating total cost of ownership of that tool but in figuring out what features of that tool matter to their business and then choosing the best cloud. Instead of thinking of cloud versus owning your own infrastructure as some kind of apples-to-apples comparison, companies should think of it more like the shift from desktop to mobile computing on worker productivity.

Companies used to issue employees desktops that had all of the company’s programs stuck on the device. Then they issued laptops that allowed employees to take their work home with them. Now many offer an array of work-related apps, tablets, smartphones and other tools to let employees take their work with them. Sure, this presents challenges, but it’s also changing and improving the way people work. And few companies decide whether or not they should issue tablets, or provide data via a mobile app, based on comparing the cost of doing so with the cost of issuing the same app on a desktop.

Much like that shift to mobility, cloud computing has the same possibilities and should engender similar debates at the executive level. The issues aren’t about trying to calculate apples-to-apples cost comparisons but about how to deal with the challenges posed by sending data outside a firewall or developing a company culture and policies that squeeze the benefits out of the new tool while also reducing risks. That’s much harder than a TCO analysis, but the benefits are a more agile business that’s likely to save some money on IT.

]]>There’s quite a ruckus going on over Microsoft Windows 8 tablets that will run on ARM-based smartphone chips. Ed Bott nicely explains how both Mozilla and Google are crying foul over third-party browser restrictions that Microsoft has put in place on these tablets. Such browsers — Firefox and Chrome, to name two — won’t have access to APIs that Internet Explorer can take advantage of. According to Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s product director for Firefox, the restrictions will ensure “there’s no way another browser can possibly compete with IE in terms of features or performance.”

How did we get here?

I can certainly understand why both companies are up in arms — no pun intended. Each has long supported an open web and have built some or all of their business with such products. Along the transition from traditional desktop to mobile computing, however, the rules have changed. Smartphones and tablets are at times are obviously considered to be portable computers, but they’re also looked upon as consumer electronic devices, which have a long, rich history of proprietary software, connectors and technologies.

Along the timeline of this change from standard computer to CE device, Apple has arguably best made the transition. The “it just works” mentality isn’t 100 percent accurate, but the latest Apple devices come closest in that regard. Think of the iPhone, iPad and even Apple TV: These aren’t just high-priced computing products; instead, you turn then on and use them just as you would a standard television set, an old VCR or an electric fan. All of the complexities inside the Apple product line are hidden by simple, intuitive controls, for example.

This isn’t a new problem

I don’t use Apple as an example to say they have the best products. Instead, it’s to show that their smartphones and tablets are more like traditional consumer electronics devices than products from most of their peers. And there’s another reason for using Apple here: For some time, Apple didn’t allow third-party browsers on its iOS devices. It does now, but they’re restricted just as Microsoft is restricting other browser capabilities in Windows 8: You can’t set a third-party browser on iOS to be the default browser, which is terribly inconvenient and likely holds back a significant amount of iOS users from using Dolphin HD or Opera to name a few.

Why is this allowed? Because Apple controls everything about its product from hardware to software to ecosystem. Perhaps you don’t like that example though. That’s fine. Consider this timely tweet from Ian Betteridge this morning because it’s spot-on in the point I’m trying to make:

Google's griping about not being able to put Chrome on Windows RT. So when will I be able to install IE on a Chromebook?

The obvious answer is that you’ll never be able to install Internet Explorer — or any other third-party browser, for that matter — on a Google ChromeBook. Google developed the ChromeOS, which is essentially a Linux core that runs Google’s Chrome browser. How is that different from what Apple does or what Microsoft intends to do?

The choice is yours, but there are trade-offs involved

As a consumer, I personally like choice. It’s choice that drives some away from Apple’s iPhone, for example, and towards a phone that runs Android or some other alternative. Mobile technology however is a huge series of trade-offs because it’s so personal. If you want the rock-solid and intuitive experience from Apple, you give up some choice to gain that experience. Willing to tinker with your device so you can run any app you want and have your phone look the way you want it to? You may give up some of the polished refinement of iOS in order to get that freedom.

Unfortunately, as mobile technology intersects more with and emulates a consumer electronics mindset, some companies are going to continue to control more of the experience, and in this case that experience is web browsing. I’m not sure this is in Microsoft’s best interest, however, mainly because the company has tried tablets for over a decade with relatively little success. Simply put: it doesn’t need another potential obstacle in the way of Windows 8 tablet sales, considering the competition from and traction of Apple’s iPad.

No matter how this browser battle plays out, I’ll do what I always do. I’ll consider the overall product, look at the trade-offs made by choosing one tablet over another and simply vote with my wallet. Ultimately, you do have the choice because it’s your money to spend on the device and browser(s) you want to use.